Certainly Strange

I’d been curious about finding a food safe epoxy for a sort of “Kintsugi” project for some time now. After I broke some plates, I decided I’d finally try it. I found this tutorial on YouTube which also recommends a food safe epoxy to try, and I thought it was really good:

However, I made two changes to this method:

One, I guess because it is winter, the resin was not nearly tacky enough to hold together the ceramic any earlier than 2 hours, so I increased the wait time.

Two, I bought some 24k gold dust for the final dusting, instead of using food coloring. I think it really makes an incredible difference. And 24k gold is food safe, and and 5 grams of it cost the same as 5 grams of the food coloring dust he recommended, so I didn’t really see any reason not to use it? I guess if you want to microwave it, but honestly the look of the real gold is so superior that I’m willing to sacrifice microwavability.

I will also add that, adding coloring to the binding resin seemed useless, as the final coat painted on top is totally opaque? I did that anyway, but couldn’t figure out why it was suggested. It seemed like it just made cleanup the next day more difficult and everything more messy in general.

Here are the resulting plates:

While I was practicing on the plates, I accidentally dropped my work mug (whilst at work).

I was scooping up all the shards and throwing them away, when I realized that maybe it would be a good project to try “kintsugi-ing” that mug as well. My employer had recently been acquired by a larger company, and they are now closing our site. I had thought that I’d keep the mug as a souvenir of all the trials and tribulations, and since the idea of wabi-sabi is that a thing is more beautiful for the life it has lived and its wear and breaks are a part of its history and aesthetic, I thought that was a healthy attitude to apply to this situation. So, yeah, it is a cheap corporate mug, but the process in this case was largely a symbolic one.

Here are some photos after the initial join, before the final gold step on top:

And here are some photos of the mug after it is all done, and I painted on the final part on top and dusted 24k gold dust onto the fresh resin:

Tah-daaah!